Ignore the blah-blah-blah monologue kissing up to the valiant railway industry, no doubt in exchange for filming permission. Check out the wonderful footage of steam engines at the outset. The short starts with a ground level shot, there are a number of the scenes taken from atop a locomotive and another of a moving auto shot from inside a train passenger car.
There are some fine-looking cars in this Chevrolet-sponsored film. A nice '35 sedan at 5:55 . I like the stream of boxy late 20s cars on the highway at 3:20 .
The less said about the acting, the better, as well as gramps' odd accent. I'm still wrapping my head around the story set-up where two model trains collide. Who's running the train set? Why are the father and son wearing ties? Geez, the kid is obnoxious.
Anyway, it sets up the comparison between train engineers and car drivers, and how the latter should be as safe as the former.
Give points for trains and cars. Subtract points for the acting and chatterbox grandpa.

If you like trains this is a must see - many great shots of trains in the 1930's and of early to mid 1930's cars. The kids train set looks a lot like out Marx train set - that locomotive is classsic. A unique twist on the "how to drive safely" theme upon which JH produced several films. Some shots of the Penobscot bldg and what looks like a partly obscured Detroit Main Train station appear in this film. On scene shows all the air pollution that industry produced in those days...maybe the Ford complex, not certain though. 5 stars for train buffs.

To each the previous reviews, this film has some lovely shots of old time US trains and the film is in excellent condition considering its age (75 years almost at the time of writing).

The story line is preposterous, the acting and casting are nothing to write home about, and the editing of the drama section sucks. But somehow, the whole ensemble is actually pretty good in its own terms.

Points to note:

Some of the trains in the early sequences are steaming along tracks with weeds in between the rails. This normally denotes a seldom used track and gives lie to the notion that we're watching crack express trains traversing the USA 8-)

The electric model train which crashes about 70 seconds into the film must have had some cigarettes or something put inside. In fact the loco is smoking just as much BEFORE it crashes as afterwards!

The relationship between the three characters shown in the film is (as noted by Spuzz) very badly drawn, are the younger guys brothers or.. what?

Contains some excellent 'over the driver's shoulder' shots going down a crowded road showing loads of 1930s cars and trucks.

Preposterous short begins with a fine and romantic tribute to trains, with many forgotten train lines shown in perspective. Then it all ends in a train wreck (literally) when two toy trains collide. "Aw, look what you did" a little boy says to his Dad. "Actually, you caused that yourself" says Grandpa, "You'll never be an engineer!" (Grandpa sure is harsh). Grandpa then says to the Dad that he should be an Engineer too. Dad says "An Engineer like you Grandpa?" It then dawned on me that Dad is actually SUPPOSED to be a younger man who can drive, but LOOKS to be the young tyke's dad. Quite a bit of off-casting there. Grandpa then says that everyone can be their own engineer when driving their car. Older Junior is not to sure what he means (and neither do we) so Grandpa goes on and on about comparing cars to trains (not bad actually). TIll finally, to shut the old man up, older junior of course says, (and I could see this coming a mile away) "Gee Grandpa, I never thought of it that way!"

Well, I don't think anyone would have.

This is an excellent example of jam handy movie technique..I am always amazed as to how they can give so much information in such little time, ,,in this case,less than 8 minutes. Well worth the download just for the fine photography of the steam passenger train .But the advice that could save lives is still very relevant today